we got a bixi membership

Two in fact. It's great for one-way trips when you will return with another transport mode. And it solves the where to lock your bike problem. And if you suffer from the "worried about your bike locked outside psychosis," the Bixi is a non-drug cure.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Should cities have autoroute highways in them?

Montreal is recovering from the post-war autoroute mentality (i.e. all roads must be designed to move cars - and cars only - as rapidly and efficiently and in the greatest volume possible). We are now working to modify roads back to a human speed and scale.

Nowhere is this more evident than the roads surrounding Mount Royal, the mountain park in the heart of our city.

The demolition and rebuilding of the Pine-Parc intersection as a conventional ground-level intersection (replacing the previous cloverleaf-style highway interchange design) is a good example of the re-humanizing of road infrastructure in the city.

This brings us to the new mayor of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borrough (arrondissement) Luc Hernandez. He wrote some interesting opinions about the MTQ (the Ministry of Transport of Quebec gov't dept.) on his blog. These comments did not suggest that the MTQ has the interest of residents of Montreal. The MTQ concerns itself with only moving vehicles. Their job is to focus on the growth of the movement of cars and trucks. More cars are good. More trucks are good. More roads are good. You can see where we're going with this. The MTQ has a job to do, and they do it: build bigger and better roads. It's pretty simple really. Quebec's a big place, and we need good roads to safely travel through our beautiful province.

But the MTQ is a bit insensitive to the needs of anyone who isn't currently in a moving vehicle. We'll call them us, the people who live here. The residents.

Mayor Luc Fernandez seems to be standing up for us. Us? This is unusual behaviour in the type of government we have in Quebec. Read his comments about the MTQ on his blog (link). The CBC interviewed Mayor Fernandez on the morning show about this, it was hilarious.(Luc seems to be a shit-disturber. Our favorite shit disturber is the nutritionist and food writer Dr. Marion Nestle.)

Discounts if you arrive on bike

Parc Drapeau keeping gate locked on path to south shore

When will the management of Parc Drapeau unlock the gate to the Pont Victoria bike-path crossing of the St-Laurence Seaway?

When they are good and ready to unlock it, and not a second before.

Of coure, if we were economic-activity-generating activity like the F1 race, the management would unlock the gate much sooner. Oh, they did that for the F1 construction crew weeks ago, because spring came early.

Seems a little unfair eh? Remember this: Parc Drapeau management has a cavalier disregard for the needs of cyclists using parc Drapeau. The actions of the park management are clear on this point.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Better bike maps, mostly

Top: Improved new edition. Bottom: old version. (New map still has problems. The location of the town of Hemmingford is covered in the new map by the map-legend, oops! And they call Rt 202 Rt 222, oops again!)

Vélo-Québec produces some bike-map books. These have improved over the years, with better quality maps. The original maps were missing all kinds of useful info.

But no more rain, and lots of stone walls (notice the smooth road also)

A message of some sort to the bunnies of the area.

For a change the honking isn't coming from cars (geese flying north for the summer)

(Letter to a friend:)

Yo, so as usual we went for a Sunday ride, and looking at the weather radar, southwest of Montreal was rain free (see blog post below), so we drove out there in pouring rain, to the land of our youth, yes, to the Chateauguay valley. We parked at the Battle Chateauguay museum in Allans's corners, near Ormstown, and rode on the Brysonville sideroad straight south towards Covey Hill, which is the big regional landmark that isn't the Chateauguay River. This road is very special, it has excellent quality, gentle rollers, and passes lots of exposed bedrock scraped clean after the last glacier and never reforested (This is called "The Rock").

Here we had to decide how we would attack the hill, so we took some zigzags to avoid highway riding and arrived via Ste-Chrysostome (services) at the straight up the side on Stevenson's side road. It goes up and gets down to business right way. This was the fun part. Seeing the hill for so long of this ride (zigzagging with lots of good views) so we were happy to do the first big country hill of the season. This is the landscape, and we were conquering it. This put us on top of Covey Hill, so we follow the road west (paralleling the nearby US Border), along a very scenic road and a favorite to the end of Pollica.

We started to ride back to the car as el derriere commanded. The weather was changing and wasn't really being our friend anymore, and the longer we stayed out... So we turn towards home and take a pause in Franklin at the dep. Natch' the rain attacked us a few times, but always short showers or isolated bands of rain that we could zip up to seal the garments and get through quickly. Had three or four of these, and good planning in the clothing dept made it no problem (i.e. heavy tights, layers, and over gloves etc to pull on to repel the rain devil.) Also, we are not stop and hide from the rain types of people, our philosophy is "If it is raining, ride harder!"

The return part of the ride was a combination of with-the-wind and with-gravity (i.e. downhill), so let the good times roll! I got back to the car with a good level of fatigue. We could have gone farther, but rain was clearly evident, and it was getting late, as usual.

We saw zero other cyclists (they were all smarter than us) and it seemed that the grey day and rain kept normal people at home, so it was a great day with only light car traffic.

Could feel the effort the next day, tired legs and upper body. Another round of energy output, recuperation and subsequent strength gain! Raised the handlebars on the Bert from all-the-way down around 3 cm, but didn't notice a big difference. The new seat... now that's a difference I can feel.

Spring is an interesting time to ride, the landscape goes from snowy, to melting, to muddy to green on the ground, to green everywhere! I followed a burbling brook all the way up Stevenson's, which added to the nice feeling of successfully climbing the steeps. There was even blue skies near the end, disappointingly book-ended by rain. Still, it was a winner ride with mainly great roads, views, scenery and the modest distance of the ride and from home.

This year we have been exploring the area southeast of Ormstown, and everything we ride we like, the bike likes, and even the car likes. Our ancestral region is excellent for road cycling, certainly one of the best in Quebec for the relaxed rider who wants to escape the blandness of bike path but doesn't want relentless killer ride, busy roads, or same old-same old.

We think that a ride up Covey Hill is one of southern Quebec's best bike rides.

Friday, April 16, 2010

A route to downtown... without cars?

Follow the yellow marked road from Mont Royal avenue to top of Peel downtown. (The short section in red should be walked)

When going downtown we like to avoid cars. Not just avoid them on the street, but avoid the street altogether.

This route takes a part of parc Mont Royal's Olmstead road and then the forested edge-of-mountain parking lots behind the Royal Victoria hospital (this is a surprising excellent route).

When arriving on the downtown side of the mountain, be sure to stop and enjoy the view. This is not optional! This mansion-turned-hospital is Ravenscrag. It was the most magnificent home in all of Canada. It is now the Allen Memorial Institute. CIA-funded LSD-brainwashing experiments took place here in the 1960s. Oh the good old days!

an after work ride

Do you think you are safe?

Sign clearly says "do not turn." So the white pickup decided... the heck with that!

The big intersection of Rockland and Jean-Talon is quite controlled. Vehicles driving south are prohibited from turning east (left), so every northbound driver can cross the intersection in perfect safety.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Signage/Map on Ste-Martine's bike path, which is part of the Parc Régional de Beauharnois Salaberry network of bike paths.

We rode south of Ste-Martine to Ste-Chrysostome and St-Antoine-Abbé, The Rock, and Riverfield.This ride explores terrain to the east of our usual Chateauguay valley ride, and this ride turned out to be a really excellent experience. Quiet roads, scenic scenery, and good asphalt and we were on the bikes one hour after leaving home in Mtl.

We were looking for quiet scenic country roads, and this ride delivered just what we wanted.

But nothing is ever totally perfect. The winds today were severe, 40 km/h with gusts at 50 km/h. This ride was a zig-zag out against the wind and with an excellent return-section with the amazing wind on our backs. It was the kind of day when riding Montreal-Quebec City becomes a good idea.

There's a new roof, interior sidewalks and devices to make vehicle traffic slow down. The bridge is in better shape now than when it was built in 1861. This is a primo rest stop location.

New historical marker (previous one was stolen)

Enjoying a favorite view upstream of the Chateauguay river at the Powerscourt bridge

South of the St-Laurence river Quebec comes to an end at Dundee (population 436, 6.3 persons per sq. km). It's where the St-Laurence river intersects the Quebec-US border. Actually, it is at the intersection of three nations, because there is also the The Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne.

Riding west from Ormstown you have many choices and if you don't make any, you will arrive at Dundee. This is not a bad thing. Explorations can discover some great things. Or you can discover some less good things, like some of the worst roads in Quebec (part of Ridge road for about 5 km) along with some of the best (i.e. most of the rest).

Temperature was 17 degrees celsius above normal. This is highly not normal.

Highlights of this ride are powerscourt covered bridge, the mainly good roads, and a super highlight is the final section on Rt 138A along the river between Dewittville and Ormstown. No road has more giant old trees than this road. There's dozens, and they are all ginormous. It's amazing.